Lawal on whether records matter, considering that Roger
Gracie is only 4-0 in MMA: “No, not really. Not really. …
His first fight was like in [2006]. He’s probably been doing a
little training here and there but not as much. Really all that
record stuff don’t matter because he has a strong skill set on the
ground. … I’m looking at him like he’s been fighting for a
while.”

On his strategy against Gracie: “I’m not worried about him
taking me down. I’m going to take his ass down. … Why not? It’s
MMA. I can stand. I can take him down. Whatever presents itself,
I’m going to do. I’m a wrestler. He’s a jiu-jitsu guy. I’m out
there to win my fight. I can keep it standing, but you know what?
There are going to be times when I shoot. If he stands upright like
that, I’m going to take him down.”

On how he’ll get Gracie to the ground without getting himself in
trouble: “It doesn’t have to be a perfect double leg. It can be
a knee-tap. It can be a trip. There are different ways to take
people down without falling in their guard. People don’t realize
that because a lot of people don’t really know wrestling. They
think, ‘Oh, single leg, double leg.’ There are other moves you can
hit other than just a single leg and a double leg. There are
modified single legs. There are modified double legs you can
hit.”

On some MMA fans not understanding the sport: “A lot of fans
are just stupid, dog. Plain and simple. A lot of them are just
dumb. They don’t know s--t. They think they know s--t, but they
don’t know s--t. … They’re not sports fans at all. They don’t
understand other sports. They just look at MMA or actually the UFC
and they just, whatever fact they hear about the fighters, then
that’s gold. That’s all they need to know. … Some of them really
can’t come to conclusions on their own. That’s the problem. They
have to look to an outside source to tell them what’s real and
what’s not. They don’t know the true history of the sport.”

On how kickboxer Tyrone Spong would do in MMA: “I think
Tyrone, his style, especially when he’s moving, he’d do great. He
just can’t use the traditional Dutch style where you stand in front
of somebody and bang and cover up because that would not work in
MMA. But when Tyrone’s on point, [when] he’s moving and he’s
throwing combos and using his speed, he’d be hard to beat in any
sport: MMA, boxing, kickboxing. As far as what weight class he’d
fight at, it’d be at 205. I feel like he’d be good at 205. He’d
match up great against all those strikers that want to strike with
him. All those strikers would become wrestlers as soon as they got
hit by him. … Technically, his standup is light years ahead of
anybody in MMA, hands down.”

On whether Georges
St. Pierre should move up to fight Anderson
Silva: “I think it’d be a tough fight for GSP, but
personally, between me and you, I don’t think that fight should
even happen. Georges should stay at 170 and just keep winning.
That’s kind of asking a lot for somebody to bump up to fight
somebody who walks around at 220. … Stay in your weight class,
Georges. If you want to go up, put on the proper weight and go up.
I think he’d have a hard time against Chael [Sonnen]. I think he’d
have a hard time against a lot of those guys there. He’s not
naturally big at that weight class.”

UFC 189 features two championship fights on Saturday in Las Vegas, but one of them will be for an interim title, as No. 3 featherweight contender Conor McGregor takes on No. 1 Chad Mendes as a solid read news >>

At the Invicta FC 13 weigh-ins, all 18 fighters taking part in Friday night's Invicta FC 13 fights will step on the scale Thursday evening, and we'll have the live video here at MMAFighting.com.In thread news >>

Take a look at the fighters most notorious for pulling out of fights. Mixed Martial Arts is a sport often plagued with injuries. In a world where the top athletes sharpen and hone their craft with puread news >>

Roger Gracie makes his return to grappling on July 10 against a Rodrigo Comprido, a familiar foe. The biggest name in submission grappling has finally brought an end to his extended hiatus from the sread news >>

Jorge Masvidal has won five of his seven fights in the UFC and spent a year ranked in the top 15 of his division. But as far as he's concerned, the slate has been wiped completely clean. The former Sread news >>

If you talk about the pre-Zuffa era of the UFC, and ask about the best fight, the one that will get the most mention is likely to be the 1999 Match of the Year winner with Frank Shamrock facing Tito read news >>

International Fight Week is set to be chock-full of fights and combat sports, so you will have to set a lot of time aside to watch them all. Between UFC, Lion Fights and grappling matches, there is nread news >>

In an appearance Wednesday night on Jimmy Kimmel live, Ronda Rousey said that challenger Bethe Correia will look different coming out of the fight than she did coming into their fight on Aug. 1 in Riread news >>